I have had success using this method as well.  I dont use charge caps, I
just drain the nicad then give it a quick zap from a large UPS battery that
I keep around.  Be careful to move quickly so as not to let the zap wire
fuse to the battery and cause small explosion hazard.  This worked great on
the little Black and Decker stick battery things.


> -----Original Message-----
> From: pic microcontroller discussion list
> [mailto:PICLIST@MITVMA.MIT.EDU]On Behalf Of Jinx
> Sent: Saturday, June 01, 2002 6:31 AM
> To: PICLIST@MITVMA.MIT.EDU
> Subject: Re: [EE]: Laptop battery fading
>
>
> > There's got to be a better way -- is there some form of battery
> > cycler that I can purchase or build that will work for these (IBM
> > Thinkpad 600x) batteries?
>
> I don't know if this will work with Li batteries (I don't know the
> failure mechanism of them), but I've just resurrected the NiCd
> battery pack for my camcorder. It had suddenly plummeted
> from a couple of hours to a few minutes usage time. The pack
> had to be cut open and then individual cells are zapped with
> a charged capacitor (10000uF @ 20V) to punch through the
> dendrite barrier. Often it's just one cell going funny that stops a
> pack charging. Works fine on cordless drill and Dustbuster
> packs too, and worth a go considering the price of a new one.
> There are commercial zappers around that use a neon/strobe
> type arrangement, but that's simply a convenient means to
> an end
>
> --
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>
>

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